Atlanta may not be the heart of technology in the U.S. but there are many opportunities to meet like-minded people that are interested in technology here. For instance, Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs Meeting is one of the largest ones with 1000 members. It’s a monthly meeting, where a subject is chosen each month and a few speakers will present on that subject. The one I attended was on iPhone Development, people who developed iPhone applications shared their experiences and gave statistics regarding sales of their applications to an audience of 50-60 people in the room.

Another one is BarCamp Atlanta, this is a yearly event in “unconference” format. There is no predefined agenda, so participants sign-up on the sheets that are hanged on the wall to talk about a subject they want. This becomes the “schedule” of the event. I attended sessions on Erlang, distributed version control, screen scraping with Ruby, iPhone SDK and witnessed how to make ice-cream in a minute using liquid nitrogen!

Overall, these events are great opportunities to meet people with same interests. Reading about technology companies starting in garages, BarCamp felt as if people were showing the cool stuff they’ve built in their garages. I can understand how Steve Wozniak must have felt when he was showing in Homebrew Computer Club the computer he built.

What I like about these events is that they are supported by ATDC, a technology business incubator part of Georgia Tech. They take place right on campus and it’s very convenient for students to attend!